


Find Me

by theterribletyrian



Category: Guild Wars Series (Video Games)
Genre: Bar Scene, Divinity's Reach (Guild Wars), Gen, Salma District (Guild Wars), Sylvari (Guild Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:52:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7990906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theterribletyrian/pseuds/theterribletyrian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three sylvari walk into a bar ... and Eriath sits down to have a perplexing, challenging chat with Rahenna, who seems intent on vanishing from everyone's radar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Me

**Author's Note:**

> * CHARACTERS: Eriath, Archon of Heresy, is an original character on temporary loan from kiligir, one of my guildmates in [Mist] (The Mistwatch Initiative). She is _not_ one of mine. Svig (one of my other OCs) has no active speaking parts in this piece; he's the norn behind the bar.  
> 
> * LORE: Eriath, due to circumstances in her own backstory, blocks herself from the empathic sense that normally connects all sylvari to the Dream. Rahenna does the same, but for her own (different) reasons. Suffice to say that both of them go into this encounter essentially 'blind' in that regard; all they have to go off of are verbal cues and body language.  
> 

All bars look the same.

Rahenna is in one of them, a nameless dive in the back streets of Salma. She sits at a table for two with her back against the floor to ceiling window, watching everyone. Her elbows are propped on the table with a dark green bottle in one hand, slender fingers occasionally toying with it.

She is silent. Watching one particular girl at the bar: a vision of creamy gold skin, with hair like sunlight. Slightly plump. Glowing with the kind of happiness peculiar to young, healthy humans. Rahenna's mood is opaque, her thoughts concealed behind a face that reveals nothing -- but every time the girl moves, those orange eyes track her like a laser.

Eriath and two friends -- studious, bookish types -- enter while discussing some shared business. Their cloaks, a mismatched motley of blue, grey, and white, flap wildly in the gust of wind that accompanies their entrance. As the heavy oak door slams shut behind them, all three notice the slight, dark figure by the window, but lone travellers aren't an oddity at this particular establishment. The space she commands is unusual, however: there are empty tables all around her, though the place is hardly deserted. There's brisk foot traffic between the door and the bar, behind which a boisterous, red-headed norn flirts shamelessly with all the female patrons, and the rest of the common room is crowded. Still, the scholars have been working all day, and there's no crime in being alone; whatever mystery lies there, it's less pressing than their thirst. Eriath volunteers to order the drinks, and the other two make themselves comfortable at a small table.

On her way back from trading innuendo-laden quips with the barkeep, Eriath hesitates, then approaches the lone woman. Her proffered "Evening, sister" is greeted by two raised eyebrows above the open mouth of the bottle -- and nothing else. The other sylvari's lips are on the rim but not wet, simply resting there as if she's thinking. She looks in some way desiccated, her cactus-spined bark covered in a fine dusting of something that's clearly not pollen. Her eyes are hard and polished, titian diamonds, impossible to read. Nothing about her suggests that she is a living creature in whose veins sap surely flows; nothing about her suggests that she has ever drunk, or even felt the touch of water. She looks like a transplant from the wilds of Elona, without any of the promise of a succulent.

The lack of response doesn't deter Eriath. Her lips move again, though a clattering of dishes behind the bar masks her words from all but the woman in front of her. Under cover of the resulting bedlam in the kitchen, Rahenna finally speaks, her voice as dry as her appearance. Husky, but in the way of a hot desert wind as it moans through a canyon of sandstone. The air itself seems to shrivel as her words emerge, occasionally audible over the yelling of the kitchen hands: something about there being nothing to be cheerful about.

Orange eyes flick back to the girl at the bar, sitting with a group of friends. Nothing in her face indicates either her thoughts or her feelings. Eriath follows that lambent gaze, seems curious for a moment, then returns her attention to the woman at the table. She says something else. This time, the words are sucker-punched by the deafening roar of a group of charr in the far corner: it's somebody's birthday, and tankards slam the trestles in a rhythmic chant that lasts a good minute or so. Rahenna, sitting with the self-contained, wary grace of a sand cat, waits for the noise to subside. Then she looks up at the Archon, and shakes her head. "Nobody knows where I am. That's the way I like it."

Eriath seems momentarily lost for words. Uninvited, she takes the empty seat directly across from her enigmatic new acquaintance, who offers no protest. There's no reaction at all to Eri's forwardness; not even a negative one. She might as well be a ghost for how much effect she's having, but doesn't let that stop her. "Everyone can be found, though. It just takes a little bit of know-how."

"Know-how that you have?" Rahenna murmurs, casting that mineral gaze -- so similar in colour, but not emotional depth, to Eri's own -- over the rest of the common room, near to bursting with the usual evening crowd. "Your friends want you back, by the way."

Eriath turns to look at the other two, who sit with curiosity written openly across their faces, and makes a small hand gesture they seem to recognise. They turn back to their own conversation. "They can wait."

Rahenna sets the bottle down, her long, lichen-pale fingers rotating it slowly in place. For the first time, she lowers her eyes, staring at the multitude of sticky rings smeared darkly across the time-worn wood. "That's what she said," she murmurs, with no levity at all. It's clearly not a joke.

Her interest piqued, Eriath tilts her head. "She?" The inquiry is delicate, but they both know it's none of her business.

"She," Rahenna repeats, with no further explanation. They both lapse into silence. At the bar, a raucous wave of merriment breaks out. The golden girl's laughter is full-bodied: the sound of mead in autumn, honey-rich, matured over a lifetime. It makes Rae's eyelids lower even farther. To a casual observer, she might almost seem asleep, a lightweight nodding over her drink.

Eriath, despite knowing her not at all, knows better. "Who," she says, her voice low but insistent, "is 'she'?"

"That's the million-gold question, isn't it?" It's rhetorical, and Eri doesn't reply. Rahenna sighs and straightens up, leaning back slightly in her chair as she stares Eriath full in the face. It's a little disconcerting to be the focus of that gaze, more earth elemental than sylvari. "The better one is, who are _you_?" It doesn't come across as defensive, the way it might with others. She's not deflecting because she's uncomfortable with the query. Nor is it an attack.

Eri smiles faintly. "Eriath. Priory. Pleas-"

Rahenna cuts her off; for a change, she seems almost angry. "Not what you do, which titles you wear, how you draw a paycheck. Who you _are_. What drives your passions."

There's a pause. Impulsively, Eriath says, "I'm a researcher. I find things."

The bottle stops turning. Where they sit, a bubble of silence grows: nothing magical, but full of obscure tension nonetheless. "That's more like it," Rahenna says softly, and smiles. The driest, shallowest smile that Eriath has ever seen, but such a change on that inscrutable face that it seems like the desert in bloom. It is startling, transforming a dehydrated husk of wood into something almost ... pretty. Then the smile vanishes, taking the mirage of life with it. "But you can't find everything. Some things just aren't meant to be found."

There's something in the way she says it that checks Eri's instant, confident response. She eyes the other woman closely. "Some things? Or some _people_?" 

The smile doesn't return, but the eyes fixed unblinkingly on hers seem to glow with muted approval. " _Now_ she gets it."

Eriath relaxes, assured once more. "I could find you. Anywhere, anytime."

With a bored, languid motion that creases the cuff of her long coat, Rahenna pushes the bottle away from her, toward the centre of the table. "Magic." There's no judgement in the word; it's a statement of fact.

A feral grin crosses Eriath's face. "It's how I roll. But I'll bet you fifty gold I can find you in two more bars after this one, with a headstart for you and no leads for me. Before midnight."

"I'll take that bet," Rahenna says, with an odd inflection in her voice that Eri can't quite pin down. Humour? No. What passes for it when you're more driftwood than dogwood. "Though perhaps I should feel insulted that you think I'll need that much alcohol in such a short space of time. Do I look heartbroken to you? Or like I frequent bars at all?"

Eriath laughs. "No. You're not even a drinker." This earns her a nod of grudging respect. "But," she continues, "I'm willing to bet _she_ is." Her chin lifts a fraction, the tilt of her head clearly indicating the girl at the bar, while her eyes remain locked with Rae's. "And where she goes, so too, do you."

"Well," Rahenna drawls, though something in her voice has hardened. "I've been found out, Lady Ventari. Although that makes it quite a bit more difficult for me, since _she_ isn't particularly good at covering her tracks. She's not trying to, for one thing. All you have to do is follow her, and you'll find me. Hardly a challenge." She glances back at Eriath's friends, who despite themselves, are staring again. They hurriedly look away. Without any change of expression, she continues to scan the room. Her eyes linger for a moment on the stairs to the upper floor, just visible around a truncated partition, before returning to the Archon.

Who snorts. "True enough. Well, then, you set the terms." It's a challenge and an invitation, and Eriath isn't sure either will be accepted. She can't get a bead on this woman at all.

Rahenna says nothing for a moment. Then she is standing, the transition so fluid and abrupt that Eriath barely sees it. She stares down at the other sylvari, her features an impassive mask. "Find me tomorrow. Same time," she says. Her voice is quiet, and ought to be drowned out by the sounds of the other patrons and the clattering of glass and wooden trenchers, but the words reach Eri's ears clearly. Her body poised as if for flight, Rae hesitates.

"Nice hair," she says at last, with the barest suggestion of a smirk. Then she's gone, moving with the swift delicacy of a professional thief as she makes her way to the back, so close to Eriath's colleagues that their robes stir at the wind of her passage. Three paces beyond them, she turns in a subtle blur of smoke and warped air, and is gone.

One hand raised to her fronds, Eriath narrows her eyes. "Of all the conceited ..." she mutters, then looks back at the abandoned bottle, full to the brim. Though she could have sworn the label showed a stylised black swan and some archaic lettering that looked vaguely Canthan, it is blank now, save for two words written in a small, neat hand.

 _ **Good luck**_.


End file.
